This is exciting, I can’t wait to hear what Jim and Jon have to say about all of this. The original District cast (from 11/27/2011) should be required listening, Jim does a great job of explaining the reasoning behind Michigan’s initial system and point system.
The cast is back! Can’t wait to hear the views on the new model from both an experienced individual in the district system, and a newcomer for when the California Model comes in 2015.
Both will be up as recordings, I believe. I’ll be tuning into the EWCPcast because folks in the chat will probably be able to ask Jon and Jim questions in real time.
The presentation on effective FIRST Strategies will likely much more time than the entire two hour gap between the start of it and the start of this podcast.
Also, there’s no way this will start on time. They never start on time : D
I am really looking forward to this cast. It is always better to hear participants in decision making processes explain the logic behind their thoughts. Much more educational than reading endlessly speculative threads.
Very good podcast… thank you very much for conducting it, EWCP, Jim Zondag, and Jon Jack! Thank you for the insight “behind the scenes” into the thought process involved in the committee making this point system!
Reading between the lines about elimination wins… was the concern with giving points for each win in eliminations basically that alliances that felt confident would “throw” a match to “share” a few points with their opponents? Was there a different loophole concern? I’m personally in favor of elimination win points simply being # of wins your robot participated in] * 5, enabling teams who win a single match to get 5 points for that. The point system works to award points not just to those that win, but also to those that came close®. While I don’t have the analytics to show it, I do think this would help distinguish all the quarterfinalists from each other.
I’d be very interested in seeing some of the analytics that Jim Zondag mentioned he may be writing up… I’ll be interested in seeing those when Jim finds the time to document and publish them!
Analysis of the week 1-6 2013 twitter data showed that ~27% of elimination rounds went to a third match, so the extra 5 points would on average be awarded to two alliances per event (i.e. total elimination points increase from 210 per event to a mean of 243 per event). It would have an impact on points but maybe little change to which team advance at each level.
I also appreciate Jim clarifying that the “no more points if you are replaced by a backup” rule was actually in place in FiM for the past few seasons and was invoked rarely (twice in FiM and once in MAR if I recall correctly). Of course it may have been rare because the rule drastically curtails the points accrued to the withdrawing robot!
If I seem a little fixated on this point it’s because as a New Englander eagerly awaiting Districts I do anticipate an increased robot failure rate as teams adjust to playing far more matches per event.